Police reveal they are not on track to reach Government deadline for 500 extra officers

Thursday, 5 December 2024

The police are unlikely to reach the 500 additional officer target by late 2025, as promised by the coalition Government.

Police bosses said they needed extra funding, which only arrived in July, to increase training capacity.

Associate Police Minister Casey Costello said there had been “no indication” police would not reach the target of hiring an additional 500 officers by November.

The police top brass has revealed they are unlikely to reach the Government’s target of recruiting an additional 500 officers by the end of next year - news, it seems, to the minister in charge.

As police leaders made that revelation during a select committee hearing, Associate Police Minister Casey Costello claimed she had been given “no indication” that the recruitment target would not be reached.

Government ministers have been steadfast in their commitment to have an extra 500 police officers on the beat by the end of 2025, despite Opposition critique that this was an unrealistic policy promise.

In May, Costello doubled down by saying: “Frontline Police numbers will be increased by 500 officers by the end of 2025”.

But speaking to a parliamentary hearing as part of scrutiny week on Thursday, Deputy commissioner Chris de Wattignar said the “more accurate target” was to have those officers employed by the end of June, 2026.

Costello said that was news to her.

“I regularly meet with Police around recruitment and there has been no indication from them that the target is unachievable,” she said.

But Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said she had seen police advice telling ministers that they were not on target to have the extra officers next year. The advice predicted the 500 new officers promise would be delivered mid-2026.

Speaking to reporters after the select committee hearing, new police commissioner Richard Chambers said he was not going to be “caught up and tangled in dates”.

He insisted this should not have been a surprise to Costello and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

“We absolutely have those conversations,” he said.

“I have had a number of meetings already with Minister Costello and we talk openly, with a good deal of common sense, about what we need to do to deliver 500 extra police officers,” he said.

He said the police college needed to maintain its standards, and so it would take as long as required to deliver the extra officers.

“We have to ensure that some things we don't rush,” he said.

De Wattignar said the police recruitment this year had largely focused on filling attrition.

“We did start behind,” he said.

“It has taken us a while to get back to the target … but are confident of achieving this target,” he said.

He said that the funding to recruit these extra officers only arrived a few months ago, following May’s Budget.

That meant that the police college was only equipped to increase its class sizes from next year. In April, he said the police college would be able to train 100 officers in each wing. The most recent graduation, Wing 379, included just 57 new recruits.

De Wattignar said he understood the Government’s target was to have 500 extra officers working in November 2025.

He said that would be “very, very challenging” and the department had been working on a budget plan to boost police numbers through the first half of this year.

“That budget only landed with us on the 1st of July this year. So, we’ve been working on a two-year basis that we have the money to do the spend. At this point we should have reached that target by the time the funding is exhausted, at the end of the 2025/26 financial year,” he said.

In a question to police bosses, Andersen quoted internal police advice saying the recruitment target not be reached until June 2026.

De Wattignar stood by that advice.

“That is probably a more accurate picture of the target, with our projection at the moment given all, that I’ve explained, that we’ve got to do to get those wings out there through the college and out the other side,” he said.

He said police expected to have met the 500 extra officers target on June 26, 2026.

But he and Chambers said they would work to recruit faster, if it was possible to do so without compromising on the quality of training.